Planning stage, any advice please

[alfandM]

Well the kids have fled home which leaves me & my husband in our early 50's with a love of travel and cycling and a desire to give up work and travel Europe. We have just bought a MH and put our house up for sale (had an offer on it yesterday!) We don't want to wait until retirement age as we will be too old to cycle too far then. We plan on buying a smaller house and helping our son by letting him rent it cheap so that we retain a property here and have a base to come back to when needed. I have been reading various blogs trying to ascertain the approximate monthly living costs of touring. We envisage staying for a week or so at a time in each place while we explore the area on our bikes and plan on covering France, Spain, Italy, Greece, and everywhere in-between. If anyone has any advice on living costs it would be much appreciated or any other advice for that matter? Scary decision to give up well paid secure jobs but what the heck! You only live once and I am off to a funeral later today for someone that was the same age as me. A giant leap into the exciting and scary unknown but can't wait to see what adventures will unfold!! :help:

Enjoy your New Adventure :thumb:

 

[Coolbeanz]

There are other options to selling up and starting to dispose of your assets at 50. Today you have a much higher chance of living into your eighties than dying in your fifties. Living in a motorhome has as many restrictions as it does freedoms. Linking retirement with instance full timing, in my opinion can sometimes be an illusion.

Speaking from experience, early well funded retirement is a fantastic experience, enjoy it but only decide on your options after testing retirement first. Thirty years of happy retirement requires much planning.

Only my informed opinion of course but enjoy whatever you decide to do.

I am guessing you missed my update post above? We have decided not to sell so we will be keeping all our assets intact. Although the house is too big for us now we can downsize at a later date if we decide we have had enough of travelling

 

[buttons]

I am guessing you missed my update post above? We have decided not to sell so we will be keeping all our assets intact. Although the house is too big for us now we can downsize at a later date if we decide we have had enough of travelling

Thanks Cb I did see your update after my post. Nothing wrong with downsizing it was the combination of all together that I was thinking about. Nothing to do with me I know but I think that giving full timing a trial before major commitment is a good move. Will give you something to plan for during your travels. :thumb:

 

[Peter_n_Margaret]

Nothing is forever and any plan should acknowledge that.

As I said earlier, we spent 5 years travelling by MH at 9 months per year.
Then we spent 2 years volunteering in Fiji. With living allowances, that stretched our finances and gave us some wonderful experiences.
Next is 3 years @ 6 months home (new grand children to nurture) and 6 months in Europe by MH.

Family and health can have immediate impacts on your best plans.
We tend not to have too fixed a plan. The ability to change your mind is important.
We have kept a 'home base', but will spend it eventually.

Cheers,
Peter

 

[Coolbeanz]

We spent 5 years at 9 months each year in a MH in Australia (where we live), so not really full timers, but the first key to cost containment is to keep fuel and accommodation costs under control. After that, some areas are much cheaper to live in than others.
We usually prefer to tour, rather than prop for long periods and may only move a short distance before stopping again to explore an area for a few days.

We also volunteer in National Parks along the way. This gets us free parking and we learn about the "secret places".

We have also volunteered on cattle stations and other places. This sometimes gets us free board as well as fantastic experiences that tourists simply can't get.

You never get to know an area until you get to know the people who live there.

We recently came home from 6 months in Europe in a MH.
We spent 10 weeks in Turkey and had a fabulous time. It was the highlight of our year.
Other highlights were Albania and Montenegro.
Living costs in those countries are probably half or less compared with many other countries in Europe.

Cheers,
Peter

We plan on doing a similar thing to add new experiences to our travels by doing the occasional workaway. I have looked on their website and there are some amazing opportunities which will give us the chance to try new things and learn new skills that we would never normally get the opportunity to do. For anyone that is not familiar with workaway just check out www.workaway.info :thumb:

We would love to tour Australia, my aunt lives in Melbourne and when we visited last year we hired a car and spent 4 days touring the Great Ocean Road to Adelaide before flying to Brisbane and then driving down to Sydney over the next few days. Incredible experience and would love to do it in a motorhome.

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[stevensson10]

Nothing is forever and any plan should acknowledge that.

As I said earlier, we spent 5 years travelling by MH at 9 months per year.
Then we spent 2 years volunteering in Fiji. With living allowances, that stretched our finances and gave us some wonderful experiences.
Next is 3 years @ 6 months home (new grand children to nurture) and 6 months in Europe by MH.

Family and health can have immediate impacts on your best plans.
We tend not to have too fixed a plan. The ability to change your mind is important.
We have kept a 'home base', but will spend it eventually.

Cheers,
Peter

wouldn't fancy full time motorhoming always glad to get back home when weve been away for a week steve